


Traditional Brain Soup

by monanotlisa



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Gun Violence, Inappropriate Humor, Non-Canon-Typical Crassness Maybe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 03:24:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa
Summary: Have you ever wondered about theeasycases for Liv, Ravi, Clive & Co.? Well, then. Have at this mini!casefile set between Season One's "Maternity Liv" and "Patriot Brains."Rated and tagged for a somewhat graphic gun-violence death; the surrounding crass humor is entirely mine.





	Traditional Brain Soup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luckydip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckydip/gifts).



The gun was sitting on the morgue tray when she came in. 

It wasn’t exactly smoking, but Liv wanted to make sure. “Ravi? You know there is a —“ she peered closer, “Ruger .22LR next to our Mr. Curtis Gustafsson?”

Ravi’s head popped around the corner from the morgue. He looked too relaxed to be held hostage or to have acquired a taste for weapons overnight, let alone a concealed pistol license. “Ah yes! Got it from our latest case.” 

“Mr. Gustafsson?”

“The very one.” Ravi said, more somberly, while Liv switched her rain-proof coat for her lab coat. “Found it lodged in his throat. Well, I’m not sure ‘found’ is the right word; it was hard to miss… In any case, he clearly was on the wrong end of a struggle with the wrong kind of people.”

"You know, Ravi, sometimes I want to be English too and answer things like, _I'll say_." Mr. Gustafsson looked to be over fifty, tall and skinny, with a shock of blond-gray hair. Fit, except for the part where he was dead. His assailant had beaten his face up before shoving the gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger. Liv browsed through the police file. He had been at his five-bedroom home in Laurelhurst. The cause of death was obvious, but the surrounding situation wasn’t: He had been killed in the hallway of his mansion, with his wife away on a trip to her sister, leading to an unfortunate Spiffy-Clean Houses  & Homes (TM) employee finding him.

Liv didn’t like tooth damage very much and hoped to God there would be no flashback of the very last moment of poor Mr. Gustafsson’s existence — the moments just before, the confrontation, would do just fine. Not that she could avoid anything. Such was unlife. “Let’s get to it, then.”

“You sound enthused,” Ravi said, and handed her the brains. “I hope you at least have something nice on the menu for today.” 

Pretty much, Liv supposed. “I was thinking Traditional Brain Soup; I brought the beef stock, eggs, and cream.”

“Still feeling that German restaurant sous-chef’s brain?”

Liv sighed, nodded, and made a beeline for the stove.

***

Clive ran his fingers through his hair and nodded at the papers on his desk, the one Ravi and Liv were bent over. “We haven’t gotten that far. We could take the cleaner, Mr. Ngo’s statement on finding the body, and the poor man is terrified but apparently uninvolved. We have also verified the wife, Rhonelle; her alibi checks out so far; she was at her sister’s 70th birthday bash —”

“Hardly a _bash_ at that age,” Liv murmured.

“Excuse me?”

Liv just stared blankly at him. 

Clive cleared his throat. “She will be coming in later, but that is mostly for information on who could possibly want her husband dead. The children also seem to be clean — one lives in Portland, one in New York City, and there is no evidence of any particularly bad blood.”

“Hah.” 

“ _Within the family_ ,” Clive said, focusing on Ravi. “We will need to cast a wider net — bank account transfers, secret gambling debts, that kind of thing.”

“Right,” Ravi said, sidling forward less than surreptitiously to block Liv. “What I thought surprising during the autopsy was that he was at his home in the morning, and then accosted in what seems to be a known location of his. What was his line of work?”

Clive jumped on that. “Good question. He had retired early.”

Liv thumbed through the crime scene photographs of the mansion and surroundings. “Not the worst home ever. Now this is some kind kind of early retirement! One I’d never find myself in with my kind of salary and situation.”

She could see Clive and Ravi exchange glances. Clive cleared his throat. “Mr. Gustafsson used to run a small publishing house. I confess I hadn’t been aware of the money in publishing, given the sorry state of journalism and print media.”

“But it’s an academic publishing house,” Ravi said triumphantly, pointing at the name. “Liv and I have seen the price tag on med school books and are not surprised, are we?” His voice was a little high, maybe pleading?

“Not in the least,” Liv said. “Damn disgrace; academic publishers will skin you alive for your dollars.“

Silence. “Have you, you know,” Clive looked from left to right to left again, “had any of your…impressions yet?”

“Would I be standing here then?” Liv asked.

Ravi took her arm very gently. “Speaking of, Liv. Maybe it’s time for a long lunch break for you to unwind a little? Come back then?”

Liv wasn’t sure about all this fuss, but said, “Sure. I’ll meet you at the morgue again at two.” 

Because precision mattered, Liv texted Lowell about her plan to come to his place for lunch.

***

She found his door unlocked and the sound of a guitar quite appealing.

Humming along with the song — he had played it earlier for her — she followed the musical trail down the hallway and found Lowell in the living room. He would be lounging, if not for his proper posture around the guitar. 

“Hey, Liv,” he said, smile soft and brilliant. “Nice break from the chords.”

“That’s what I thought, too, except for me, it was chores.” Liv looked at Lowell, feeling pleased about landing such a fine specimen. He really was something. “At the precinct they were waiting for my vision as if I were a circus pony. Ugh.”

Lowell raised an eyebrow. “Can’t imagine what it’s like to do it as part of an investigation. But I know what being on a bad brain feels like. Are you okay, Liv?”

Liv paused. She was not entirely certain. “I feel fine. Just irritated.”

“Still want to spend time with me?” Lowell’s lashes were extraordinarily long when he blinked up at her like this. “You don’t have to say anything, or even do anything. Obviously you can’t eat a snack. But we can hang out and do the ultimate brain-dead thing together?”

“Watch television?”

“Watch television,” Lowell grinned and added, “snuggled up together under a blanket in front of the set.”

The finest of specimen. “I’m in.”

***

Liv was barely at the morgue’s door when the vision hit her like a brick: of a man leaning in to — Curtis Gustafsson in, what was this, an office full of dark wood panels, sunlight coming in through glass that threw a shadow of many names and an ampersand at the opposite wall? The man’s face was dark with blood, his voice quiet. Deathly quiet, _I know the suits are on the other side of this door, but you’re not actually gonna take your photos and invoices and floor plans to court, or you will regret it. Hear me? You’ll regret it._

The door swam back into her vision, and she breathed, without really having to do so. “Ravi! We need to tell Clive; I need a sketch artist and a phone book of Seattle’s law firms. At least our victim’s lawyer should no longer be bound by attorney-client privilege.”

Ravi looked up, goggles mugged, and raised his hands. They were bloody. “Liv, give me a minute to go there. But tell me right now whether you got a vision of the murder?”

Liv squinted at him. “Better. I got the murderer.”

***

Clive leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Well done. The actual perp is still in the wind, but getting to Robert ‘Bob The Builder’ McPherson is worth ten hitmen.”

Ravi next to her bobbed his head in time with Clive’s swivel of his chair. “Can’t believe we got Seattle’s biggest scam architect-slash-constructor. There’s our good deed for society for today.”

Liv felt a little pleased. It was quite a proud effort on their part, true. “Well, once we connected the dots of the design and construction of Mr. Gustafsson’s mansion and his methodical plan for litigation to take McPherson down, the rest was almost simple.”

Clive laughed. “Let’s not get carried away. Rhonelle Gustafsson did half our work, with her recollection of her husband’s methodical evidence of construction fraud. But you were instrumental with the rest and cracking the case; thanks.”

“Any time,” Liv said.

Ravi patted her shoulder. “Once more with humility.”

Pshaw. But she couldn’t help smiling at Clive and Ravi both. And thinking about making her way home to Lowell tonight. She should, after all, slowly ease off this brain…

**Author's Note:**

> I happen to adore manic!pixie!dreamboy Lowell. Thanks for the prompt, luckydip, and of course your pinch-hit.


End file.
